


Fairy Dust

by jedishampoo



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laisa and Gregor find a few minutes alone, but Barrayar always finds a way to interfere. Set during A Civil Campaign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewhiteowl](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=thewhiteowl).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Волшебная пыльца](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799081) by [Russian_Fic_Store](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Russian_Fic_Store/pseuds/Russian_Fic_Store)



**Title:** Fairy Dust  
 **Author:** Jedishampoo  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Notes:** For [**thewhiteowl**](http://thewhiteowl.livejournal.com/) in the Bujold ficathon 2006. The request was for something with Gregor (either during the angsty Vor Game period, or his romance with Laisa). Thanks to my beta sharpeslass. :) Comments, critique, all appreciated.  
 **Summary:** Laisa and Gregor find a few minutes alone, but Barrayar always finds a way to interfere. Set during _A Civil Campaign._

  
***

Laisa Toscane was having a nicely businesslike conversation with Lord Vorsmythe when the man paused in midsentence, eyes filling with a strange, slightly alarmed look. Laisa felt the light fingers on her shoulder before she had time to turn and see who’d approached. The touch was warm and affectionate.

“Pardon me,” Gregor The Emperor said from somewhere above her, and Vorsmythe took himself off posthaste. Laisa turned and looked up, and just as she’d suspected, her fiance looked quite imperially satisfied with himself.

“I believe I’ve said sufficient goodnights, if you have,” he told her, dark eyes filled with humor.

“What a lovely idea,” Laisa said, and gave him her most genuine smile of the evening. “Where is Lady Alys?”

“With Vortala, for the moment.”

“Then we must be quick, I take it?”

Gregor The Man grinned for real, just for her, and took her arm. They edged their way out of the room.

Laisa supposed she should feel somewhat ashamed at the bubble of naughty excitement that swelled in her stomach and threatened to burst in a giggle. The talks this evening had been quite productive for a change, and yet here they were, sneaking like teenagers out of a ballroom still half-full of industrialists and Escobaran ambassadors.

The Escobarans had been surprisingly eager of late to reconfigure their Barrayaran trade treaties, surprisingly in favor of Barrayar despite their 30-year-old grudge. Laisa fancied this might have something to do with her upcoming wedding. Now that it looked like Komarr’s membership in the Barrayaran Empire would be more solidified than ever, ambassadors from worlds all about the Komarr wormhole nexus were more than happy to relent and cement and dance and drink till all hours of the night. So odd, to think that one’s personal connections could have galactic repercussions. It was a notion Laisa had still to become used to, as she faced becoming Empress of Barrayar.

The beautiful old-world decorations in the Imperial Residence’s halls-- now those, she had become used to, though she appreciated them no less. But the sitting room Gregor led her to was a change from the elegant hallways. It was nearly connected to his bedroom, and was smaller and less ornate than most of the other chambers. It was one of the few places in the Residence which was allowed to conceal the older, more comfy furniture. Some of it was even mismatched. There was the poufy green couch with scratched wooden armrests, the low oaken table decorated with condensation rings, the back-country hutches with their chintzy trinkets scattered here and there. Her parents, even if they’d owned such things, would never have allowed such a room to exist in their home. Laisa adored it.

Gregor shut the door behind them and went to fetch refreshments. Laisa, still feeling awake despite the late hour, wandered about the room.

They’d really spent very little time here. They were both just so _busy._ Nearly every minute of every day for the next few weeks was painstakingly accounted for in advance. These moments alone were a welcome respite. Laisa sincerely hoped some serious canoodling was in order.

“White?” Gregor asked, and Laisa turned to nod at him, smiling. He grinned in return and pulled a bottle out of the dented cooler, giving the bottle a jaunty little flip in mid-air before going to work with the corkscrew. Laisa laughed in appreciation of both his action and his good mood, then turned back to her examination of his various souvenirs. A little drawer with an enameled handle drew her eye.

She paused with her hand on the knob before opening it. “I won’t set off any alarms if I open this, will I?”

“Nope,” Gregor said, at the same time as the ‘pop’ of the wine cork. “It’s full of mostly personal junk. Very boring.”

“No state secrets? Are you sure?” Laisa teased, turning again.

“Positive. Impsec searches this room at least once a day, you know,” he told her. The glint in his eye was positively evil as he filled the glasses so full that Lady Alys would have raised her socially-correct brows-- Laisa knew this for a fact, for she’d been on the receiving end of a few Vorish pouring lessons-- and leaned back into the couch’s poufs in a very suggestive pose.

How Laisa wanted to join him! But after all that reassurance, she felt she ought to snoop at least a tiny bit more. The drawer was full of travel magazines and show programs, and Laisa dutifully pulled them out and riffled them a bit. She was about to replace them when she noticed a little arrow scratched into the wooden bottom of the drawer. It was irregular, as if it had been carved by a clumsy hand, or a very young one. She pulled the drawer out a bit more. The arrow appeared to be pointing at a notch cut into the drawer’s side. Laisa stuck her finger in the notch.

“Aha!” The drawer below it, which Laisa had thought merely decorative, popped open. “Secret compartments!” she announced with no small bit of glee.

“They’ll have searched that, too,” Gregor drawled. “Come on over here, why don’t you?”

“Only with my booty.” The drawer had contained a cardboard box, which tinkled and thumped enticingly when she shook it. Laisa carried the box over to the table, and then collapsed into the couch. The air trapped in the cushions whooshed out like a sigh.

She felt something cool being pressed into her splayed fingers. Gregor was handing her a glass of wine. Knowing how full it was, Laisa sat up to drink so she wouldn’t spill a precious drop. “Yummy,” she said as she tasted it.

“Mmm-hmm,” Gregor agreed, and leaned over for a quick kiss. His lips were sweet and cool from the wine. So dear, so enticing, so _normal._ Laisa took a moment to examine him in his relaxed pose. He looked positively limp. Laisa could just fall over onto him, damn the wine--

But then she saw the box from the corner of her eye, and a less welcome thought struck her. _Impsec._ Laisa wondered whether or not there were secret cameras here, of all places. She thought about asking, then ultimately decided against it. There probably were. And just as likely, there were stiff men in dark clothing behind them.

Barrayar. Such old-world power, in a such a surprisingly modern package. Gregor was hers, but he was also a man of his people. When she looked into Gregor’s eyes at that moment, Laisa fancied she could see the eyes of Barrayar’s first rulers staring back at her. Of course everyone was an amalgamation of their ancestors, but here it was _different,_ somehow. It was an aristocracy of blood, not money, that ruled this place.

One one level it was all so romantic, balm to the secret soul of a girl who’d once loved everything pink, and who’d read centuries-old stories of the knights and ladies of ancient Earth. A girl who’d dreamed of swords and sun-dappled forest paths. They had those, here on Barrayar, as surely as they had an Emperor.

Then the moment changed, and it was just Gregor looking back at her, unreadable to many but not to her. He was real, not fantastical, and she was glad the fairy-dust had been blown from him, for then she would not have found this delirious, joyful love.

Still-- those _cameras_! Another thing to get used to.

 _In a few moments, that was._ Laisa decided to take another sip of her wine and give the Impsec men a different kind of show. She ignored Gregor’s frustrated moan and sat up to examine her hidden treasure. The tattered box lid was unsecured and practically fell off.

Inside was the promised junk, but of a more personal kind. Old bits of cloth were wrapped around little rocks and mini-holoprojectors which, long-depleted of charge, would not activate. But there in the corner was the strangest thing-- it looked like a child’s shoe. It was dirty, and flattened from its storage in the box. Laisa dug around for a bit but could not find a mate.

She pulled it out and shook it free from bits of tissue to dangle it in front of Gregor. “Now _that_ cries out for an explanation,” she said, chuckling, anticipating some sort of embarrassed groan from her love.

Gregor’s reaction was not something Laisa could have ever predicted. His face went stiffer than she’d seen it in weeks, lips compressed to nearly nothing, and his eyes-- all the ages of her earlier fancies, centuries of Barrayar, filled them.

“Ah,” Gregor finally said, then was silent, and grey.

“What is it, love?” Laisa dropped the shoe back into the box as if it was a lit firecracker, and grabbed Gregor’s hand. “I’m so sorry! Please tell me I haven’t upset you!”

“Never. Not you,” Gregor said, and squeezed her hand in return, squeezed it _hard_ as if afraid to let it go.

“Whose was it?” Laisa pressed when it appeared he would not elaborate. It had to be important; a lost child of some sort? A horrible thought filled her. “Where is the other?”

Gregor took a short breath. “It was the last thing my mother held, I believe, before she grabbed a plasma arc and was shot, and killed.”

Laisa stared for a stunned moment. When he got to the point, he _really_ got to the point. No meandering around the truth for her Gregor. She loved him for it, but still, it was unnerving. She struggled to compensate.

“Oh, when your mother died during the-- the-- Vordarian Pretendership,” she said at last, hating the stutter. _Her_ doctorate was in business, dammit, not history, though Lady Alys and Gregor himself had given her the shocking story. “You never mentioned a _shoe._ ”

“It was mine,” he told her. “You could get the gory details straight from Lady Cordelia, if you wished. It was a symbol, that I was still alive and well despite the Pretender’s propaganda.” He sighed.

“My poor love,” Laisa said, and leaned into his slender frame, wrapping her arms about him. Never had she thought she might say such a thing to a grown man, the Emperor of Barrayar no less, but some deep womanly instinct told her it was the right move. She felt some of the stiffness leak out of his muscles, and was glad. But he wasn’t finished.

“A pawn, Laisa. That’s business as usual, here. Understand, love?”

Laisa knew exactly what Gregor meant, was thinking, because they’d had a version of this conversation when he’d proposed. He was wondering again whether she was prepared for all an Empress might be expected to deal with. _Pawns._ Their children would be political playthings no matter what, but could she and Gregor protect them, or would they be bandied about in the best, bloody, Barrayaran style?

Laisa felt pretty damned protective already, and not just of their un-conceived future children. She knew she was no Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan. She knew that if she had any sanity at all, she would run as fast as her stylish Komarran heels could carry her to the nearest shuttleport, and hitch the first ride off-planet. But she wasn’t sane, she was in love. With the good. And somewhat prepared for the bad. Where else could she go but forward?

“Of course I understand. I love you, darling, and trust you,” she said with another hug, earning a bleak smile from her lover.

And she _did_ trust Gregor. He would never gamble with her or their childrens’ lives; that was why Impsec searched these rooms daily, and followed them everywhere. The stern men behind the cameras suddenly seemed less threatening. They were the fairy dust that kept the figurehead of the Imperium alive to wear his uniforms and ride his horses and do whatever else he had to do to keep Barrayar running.

And to keep him around for _her_. This time it was Laisa who leaned in to initiate a kiss, trying to put all her faith in the mere touch of their lips.

Gregor pulled back and looked at her up close, eyes dark in his ever-serious face. “Are you sure?”

Laisa set a red fingernail against his chin. “I’ve answered this before, and I certainly hope you don’t keep asking. I’m very resilient, and practical. You’ve seen me handle your counts and ambassadors, right? Yes.”

“I know. I won’t. I have. And thank you.” He cheered with the teasing, and so did Laisa. Only her Gregor could have kept all those queries and replies straight.

“You’re welcome. Though I do think you should put that somewhere more safe.” His mother had practically _died_ holding it. Laisa thought she knew why, and felt a kinship with the dead Princess Kareen in her love for this man. Barrayar was not only a patriarchy; Laisa had learned _that_ already.

Some of that feminine fervor must have shone in her eyes, for Gregor picked the shoe out of the box and set it gently on the table before them, watching her wryly the whole while. “I believe when Lady Cordelia gave it to me, all those years ago, she meant me to keep it as some sort of memento. I forgot about it. Sort of.”

“A souvenir of battle?” Laisa asked. “I can believe it of her.” Though she didn’t believe for an instant that he’d forgotten where he’d put it.

“Souvenirs of battle would be more Viceroy Vorkosigan’s style, or Miles’s, I suppose...”

Laisa considered that for a moment. _No_ , she thought. Gregor was wrong. Lady Cordelia would have wanted it exactly that way. “Keep it where we can see it. Then we’ll both remember the past, and this conversation.”

He caught her drift. No more worrying about _her_. “Brilliant Laisa,” Gregor the Man said. This time, when they kissed, neither of them drew back any time soon. This was their time, alone. Impsec, shoes, Gregor’s adoptive family: Laisa forgot them all in the feel of his careful, deliberate fingers on her shoulders, and the urgent taste of his lips. He wasn’t just Barrayar’s, he was _hers_ , and Barrayar better damn well just remember it.

The comconsole chimed just as things were getting most interesting. “It’s Ivan Vorpatril, Sire,” Gregor’s night secretary said through audio-only. “Should I--”

Gregor leaned his forehead on her chin. She could feel his bone-deep sigh through their embrace. “Ivan never calls on that line.”

“Then you’d better answer it.” Laisa swept away a moment’s pique. She would have to work harder to find the perks in this Empress business. Other than the horses, and the sun-dappled forest paths, and of course, Gregor. Perhaps after the wedding she could order them all beheaded. Yes, that’s exactly what she would do.

“Put it through,” Gregor the Emperor said.

 **End**

 **Disclaimer** : Characters created by Lois McMaster Bujold: no copyright infringement intended, and no money was made from writing this.


End file.
